Beatriz Ferreyra (1968)
Sampling
A former student of Nadia Boulanger who abandoned classical harmony to work with Pierre Schaeffer. At the GRM, she proved that sound is not a monolith but an “accord of components,” creating a unique manual mixing technique using four tape recorders.
Full text
After hearing a concert of musique concrète in 1963, Beatriz Ferreyra left her classical harmony lessons with Nadia Boulanger and secured a position at Pierre Schaeffer's laboratory (GRM). There, she achieved a methodological breakthrough: in her study “Constructed Objects” (1968), Ferreyra proved that sound is not a monolith but an “accord of components,” where a shift in amplitude or frequency by mere milliseconds changes the entire perception. Unlike her colleagues, who primarily worked with micro-editing of tape, she focused on mixing—layering sounds using four synchronized Revox tape recorders.
Ferreyra physically “played” the equipment. Before multi-track recorders appeared, she had to construct complex rhythms “by eye.” By running several recorders simultaneously, she would splice pieces of colored blank tape between sounds to visually track when the next sound would enter. By rhythmically moving the tape or tapping the tension lever, she created artificial vibrato and spatial glissandos literally by hand. Although Ferreyra occasionally worked with analog synthesizers, such as the Coupigny synthesizer available to her, she found purely software-based electronic sound “lifeless” compared to acoustic sources.
The electroacoustics scene of the 1960s was a harsh “boys' club” where, according to Ferreyra, a woman had to be “fifty times better than a man just to be heard.” In 1970, due to creative differences, she made a dramatic exit, leaving the GRM and setting up her own independent studio using decommissioned equipment. Ferreyra refused to switch to computers until 1997, partly due to the loss of tactile contact with the material and partly due to financial constraints.
Sources
- Courchene, Kim S. (2001). A Conversation with Beatriz Ferreyra — CMJ
- Dubesset, Mathilde; Rochefort, Florence (2007). Beatriz Ferreyra (interview) — Clio
- Hutton, Jo (2020). Systems, Objects and Space in the work of Beatriz Ferreyra, Delia Derbyshire, Éliane Radigue and Teresa Rampazzi — Univ. of Surrey
- Moore, Adrian (2016). Sonic Art: An Introduction to Electroacoustic Music Composition — Routledge